Field of the Invention
This invention relates to medical instruments adapted for introduction into the body. More particularly this invention relates to medical instruments having electrodes for obtaining cardiac electrograms.
Description of the Related Art
Electrical activity at a point in the heart is typically measured by advancing a multiple-electrode catheter to measure electrical activity at multiple points in the heart chamber simultaneously. A record derived from time varying electrical potentials as measured by one or more electrodes is known as an electrogram. Electrograms may be measured by unipolar or bipolar leads, and are used, e.g., to determine onset of electrical propagation at a point, known as local activation time. Various electrode designs are known for different purposes. In particular, catheters having basket-shaped electrode arrays are known and described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,772,590, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
Sensors in a cardiac chamber may detect far-field electrical activity, i.e., the ambient electrical activity originating away from the sensors, which can distort or obscure local electrical activity, i.e., signals originating at or near the sensor location. Commonly assigned U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2014/0005664 of Govari et al., which is herein incorporated by reference, discloses distinguishing a local component in an intracardiac electrode signal, due to the tissue with which the electrode is in contact from a remote-field contribution to the signal, and explains that a therapeutic procedure applied to the tissue can be controlled responsively to the distinguished local component.
Commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 6,748,255 to Fuimaono et al., the disclosure of which is herein incorporated by reference, describes a basket catheter for mapping the heart. The catheter comprises an elongated catheter body and at least one lumen therethrough. A basket-shaped electrode assembly is mounted at the distal end of the catheter body. The basket assembly comprises a plurality of splines connected at their proximal and distal ends. Each spine comprises at least one electrode. The basket assembly has an expanded arrangement wherein the splines bow radially outwardly and a collapsed arrangement wherein the splines are arranged generally along the axis of the catheter body. The catheter further comprises a distal location sensor mounted at or near the distal end of the basket-shaped electrode assembly and a proximal location sensor mounted at or near the proximal end of the basket-shaped electrode assembly. In use, the coordinates of the distal location sensor relative to those of the proximal sensor can be determined and taken together with known information pertaining to the curvature of the splines of the basket-shaped mapping assembly to find the positions of the at least one electrode of each spine.